April 22nd is designated annually as Earth Day. This day is recognized by 192 national governments to demonstrate support for environmental protection. Numerous communities go further by celebrating Earth Week, with activities focused on environmental issues. Popular international campaigns and initiatives include A Billion Acts of Green.
Although global Earth Day activities are co-ordinated by the Earth Day Network, many countries, including Canada, have their own Earth Day environmental education, promotional activities and planning resources.
In 2013, The Face of Climate Change seeks to utilize social media to highlight solutions and showcase the power of those taking action around the world through images and related stories - from eco-projects to community action events with more than one billion people expected to take part in Earth Day.
For Earth Day, perhaps we could start thinking of our relationship to the earth itself - 88 elements in our bodies are found on every continent. The ground beneath us supports our homes, cities, farms, industrial parks, factories and just about anywhere we walk.
Healthy soil is fertile soil teaming with microbes bringing the dead back to new life with an "earthy" aroma. How we treat the soil has food security implications for all generations.
For most of recorded history, soil has occupied a central place in human cultures. From the first ancient agricultural civilizations in Mesopotamia, to the Greeks and Romans, from the African Sahel and the Amazon basin to modern western societies, our survival has always depended on an adequate supply of fertile soil to provide for our growing populations. Modern images make it difficult to imagine that northern Africa could have supported the Roman Empire with food or that Iraq was the cradle of civilization. Civilizations, past and present, are affected when people run low on food supplies.
While the world's population continues to grow, the amount of productive farmland began declining in the 1970s. The constant problem of soil degradation and soil erosion continues to be a global concern. By consuming soil faster than it forms can prove to be difficult to stop since the slowest changes can be the most difficult to recognize. Estimates vary, but under natural conditions it can take up to 500 years to produce an inch of topsoil. Soil is an intergenerational resource of natural capital that can be conserved or abused - a fine line between prosperity and desolation.
Around the world, the lack of soil conservation has lead to rapid soil loss in some regions while others maintain an adequate supply of fertile soil. When measured over several generations, few regions produce soil fast enough to sustain industrial agriculture. Authorities agree that globally we are slowly depleting our most essential resource, soil. Although the loss of arable land can be measured in many ways, it is estimated that 24 billion tons of soil are lost globally each year, continuing unnoticed in anyone's lifetime.
Technological innovation can solve many of society's problems, however consuming a natural resource such as soil faster than it can be replenished means we will run out of it. Soil conservation is essential to the health and longevity of any civilization. Soil stewardship practices are more important now than at any other time.
Our planet has relatively few regions well suited to sustaining intensive agriculture. Grassland soils found in Western Canada are extremely fertile, unlike other regions with poor soils that can be difficult to farm and are vulnerable to soil erosion. However, there are farms in every country that are managed with no net loss of topsoil.
As far back as the 1930's, people such as Albert Howard began to advocate the benefits of incorporating large-scale composting to restore and maintain soil fertility. He considered that soil was an ecological system in which microbes provided a living bridge between soil humus and living plants. Others such as West Jackson suggest imitating native prairie ecosystems to adapt agriculture to the land.
According to David Montgomery, "As much as climate change, the demand for food will be a major driver of global environmental change throughout the coming decades. Over the past century, the effects of long-term soil erosion were masked by bringing new land under cultivation and developing fertilizers, pesticides and crop varieties that compensate for declining soil productivity. However, the greatest benefits of such technological advances accrue in applications to deep, organic-rich soil. Using up the soil and moving on to new land will not be a viable option for future generations."
The study of civilizations and our relationship to the soil is incredibly complex. However, in a world preparing to live where everyone must compete for dwindling resources, our future depends on living in a world where the earth's resources are replenished and abundance is shared.
Thinking about soil on Earth Day makes plain sense.
